Nonfiction Call Numbers with Grade 3

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each third grader got a slip of paper with a number and a topic. They had to find other students with the same number and figure out how the different topics could be classified under one major label. If you are not a third grader and think you have cracked the code, put your answers in the comments!

• 500s: planets, electricity, magnets, weather, dinosaurs, bugs, ecosystems, animals
  
  
• 700s: movies, art, photography, music, sports, jokes, crafts
  
  
• 900s: ancient civilizations, countries, states, wars, explorers, named rivers and mountains
  
  

The next week, using what they knew about the categories, each student had to assign the correct "hundreds" to a list of topics. To get a 4 on the assignment, they could create a book cover for a nonfiction topic and put the correct call number on the spine label. Here are the ones that were completed correctly: